It’s an unusual setting for one of the world’s most modern aircraft — a provincial French village with 19th-century charm — but every two weeks Levignac hosts a nocturnal procession of huge Airbus A380 parts on their way to the Airbus assembly line.

Raising his hands as high and wide as he can, local resident Jerry Ridge explains what it’s like to see the convoy of six individual parts that, when put together, form the largest passenger aircraft in the world. “When you see it in pieces, coming through a little village on the back of trucks, it looks bigger than the complete item,” he says. “It’s taller than the buildings.”